vivre et espérer
by ARandomFangirler
Summary: vivre et espérer; to live and to hope. "Love is the same, no matter how long you live for," Magnus said at last, and Isabelle snorted humourlessly. "Some things you just have to live with." one-shot. post cohf but pre epilogue.


"I've been meaning to ask you something," Isabelle said.

She had the strange, serious look on her face that was so rare yet so reminiscent of her brother, and something about it made Magnus abandon the coffee he'd been making on the sideboard. Isabelle had looked better today - better than usual, better than the immediate days and weeks after the death of Sebastian and the resetting of Simon's memories, when she'd been permanently red-eyed and pale. He supposed she'd been waiting until she had such difficult things as _emotion_ under control to start posing difficult questions. It was very Lightwood of her.

"Go on," he encouraged, moving to sit on the couch opposite her. Something about the thick emotion of it all reminded him of his time in Paris with Tessa, though Magnus couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. "I'll even think about answering, if it's a good question."

The corners of Isabelle's mouth twitched up into a smile, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. With her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she seemed childlike, as young as Clary had been the last time Magnus had ever refreshed the block on her mind. It was a silly comparison, of course - Clary and Isabelle were as aesthetically different as chalk and cheese - but it was the right one. She glanced up at him through her lashes.

"Before you met my brother," she began, and then the words caught in her throat and her eyes darted down to her squared-off fingernails. Looking at her was like touching a live wire. Isabelle shook her head. "Wait, no. Before Alec, and before Camille-" her mouth twisted around the name on reflex, an action so _Isabelle_ that Magnus wanted to laugh, "-what was it like? Living, I mean."

"This is about Simon," he said. It was not a question. Isabelle nodded, and then bit down on her lip.

"It hurts," she admitted. From what Alec had told him, Magnus knew that Isabelle had been crying herself to sleep nearly every night, but this was the first time he'd ever heard her say as much. "It hurts so much more than I thought it would. Sometimes I wish I could forget, too."

"I know," Magnus said gently, because he did. Sometime around the turn of the century, Catarina had broken down and confessed to altering his memories of Camille in the twentieth century at his own request. But getting rid of the memories had not saved Magnus from pain. And Simon was _part_ of Isabelle now - he was woven into the tapestry of her character, whether she liked it or not. As easy as it seemed on paper, deleting Simon from Isabelle's existence would have unintended consequences. Still, how could he possibly say that to her in a way she would understand? Isabelle would not live forever. Isabelle's existence was a candle's flickering flame, and it was ultimately up to her how she decided to extinguish it. "Pain is what makes us human, Isabelle. It's better to have loved him and lost him than think you were entirely incapable of love. That's just the way life is."

Isabelle set her jaw and laughed hollowly. "You sound like Alec," she said. "If I wanted to hear from my brother, I'd have asked him."

He knew what she wanted to hear, and he couldn't say it.

Silence descended upon them, heavy as sin. Magnus swallowed. Conversations like this with Isabelle were always difficult. She had all of Cecily's stubbornness and a good degree of Anna's guarded cynicism, and yet when he'd looked at her before, he never used to see her as anything other than just _Isabelle_. It did no good to live in the past, he'd told Tessa. When had he stopped obeying his own rules? When had he begun to compare Isabelle to the sum of her parts?

"Love is the same, no matter how long you've been alive for," Magnus said at last, and Isabelle snorted humourlessly. "Some things you just have to live with."

"I don't want to live with this," Isabelle replied, and her voice cracked. Magnus knew about Robert Lightwood's affairs, about Maryse's habit of pushing her pain onto her daughter, about Isabelle shouldering the burden of a failing marriage when she was barely old enough to lift a sword by herself. It had not endeared him to the Lightwoods of this day and age, that much was certain. "I don't want to be like my mother. I don't."

"It's a different kind of heartbreak," he said. "It's the heartbreak of inevitability. Tell me what you could've done in that moment, Isabelle. You're, what, seventeen? You're not your parents. Neither you nor Alec are."

He felt very old, looking at her. Magnus sometimes forgot that he was not really nineteen - but now he was hyperaware of the ocean of time and experience between them. Tessa had had decades with Will, and decades to get over him, and at least she had had finality in his departure. Isabelle had only had a year, and not even that, and now she would have to rework the rest of her life to avoid him, tell herself she didn't see him on the subway, pretend that Simon Lewis didn't exist, and she didn't get enough time for any of that. Mortals never got enough time, and Magnus was immortal, and yet he never seemed to have enough either. No matter which hand you had against time, you always lost. It only healed all wounds because it robbed one of the flesh they were embedded in to begin with.

"See, you get it," Isabelle sighed, and gathered her long, charcoal hair into a rope by her waist. God, she looked like Alec. How could he have ever pretended not to see him in her? "You can tell Alec that, because you are to Alec what Simon should've been to me. But we never got that far. We messed up, both of us, and then duty got in the way, and we _never got that far_ , and I'm going to regret that as long as I live, Magnus, because for some reason I fuck everything good up."

"I promise you that life goes on," he said. "I know it doesn't seem that way, but it does, Isabelle, and yes, it hurts, but this isn't dying."

"Then _what_ is this?" she asked, the words hanging between them like spider's silk, shimmering pale and translucent. Her pain seemed palpable - it pulsated through her, in perfect harmony with her thudding pulse.

"This," he said, "this is living."

The front door swung open. It was Alec, carrying two grocery bags and wearing one of his godawful black sweaters. Previously on the verge of tears, Isabelle wiped her pretty face perfectly clear of any sadness, and studiously avoided her brother's eyes.

"Izzy," Alec blinked, with a degree of surprise. "I didn't know you were coming over. What's up?"

"Nothing," Isabelle lied smoothly, and twisted her hair up into a skein on the top of her head, securing it with her razor-sharp chopsticks that she carried everywhere with her. Alec's gaze darted over to Magnus, but Magnus didn't say anything. "I was just telling your boyfriend over here that he ought to take one for the team and burn all your turtlenecks while you're busy fretting over Mom. He's having reservations."

She stood, all languid Shadowhunter grace, and gave Magnus one last pleading look before heading for the door. "Thanks anyway," she said, voice full of meaning, and her eyes seemed to burn.

"Is she alright?" Alec pressed.

"She will be," Magnus replied, and he was surprised at his own conviction. "Eventually."


End file.
